The real Justin Bieber performs at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas last year. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

(Newser)
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A man who reportedly pretended to be Justin Bieber online has been charged with more than 900 child sex offenses in a case police in Queensland, Australia, call "frankly horrendous." The 42-year-old Brisbane law professor was charged with grooming and exploiting children last fall and was charged with another 931 offenses, including rape, this week after cops found a huge amount of child exploitation material on his computer, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. "The breadth of offenses committed in this instance are frankly horrendous," says Queensland Detective Inspector Jon Rouse. Investigators believe his crimes go back at least 10 years.

Police say the man, who's already in jail and will be back in court next month, used platforms like Facebook and Skype to communicate with his victims, pretending to be the Canadian singer to persuade children under 16 to send him explicit images, CNN reports. "The fact that so many children could believe that they were communicating with this particular celebrity highlights the need for a serious rethink about the way that we as a society educate our children about online safety," Rouse says. The Courier Mail identifies the suspect as Gordon Douglas Chalmers, who was refused bail after his arrest in November when he refused to let investigators access his online accounts.